The Unicorn from the Stars

Hearne like myself. It is he has the generous heart! It is not Martin would make a hypocrite of me and force me to do night-walking secretly, watching to be back by the setting of the seven stars! He begins to play his flute. Thomas I will turn you out of this, yourself and this filthy troop! I will have them lodged in gaol. Johnny Filthy troop, is it? Mind yourself! The change is coming. The pikes will be up and the traders will go down!

All seize Thomas and sing.

When the Lion will lose his strength,
And the braket-thistle begin to pine,
The harp shall sound sweet, sweet at length,
Between the eight and the nine!

Thomas Let me out of this, you villains! Nanny We’ll make a sieve of holes of you, you old bag of treachery! Biddy How well you threatened us with gaol, you skim of a weasel’s milk! Johnny You heap of sicknesses! You blinking hangman! That you may never die till you’ll get a blue hag for a wife! Martin comes back with lighted lamp. Martin Let him go. They let Thomas go, and fall back. Spread out the banner. The moment has come to begin the war. Johnny Up with the Unicorn and destroy the Lion! Success to Johnny Gibbons and all good men! Martin Heap all those things together there. Heap those pieces of the coach one upon another. Put that straw under them. It is with this flame I will begin the work of destruction. All nature destroys and laughs. Thomas Destroy your own golden coach! Martin Kneeling before Thomas. I am sorry to go a way that you do not like and to do a thing that will vex you. I have been a great trouble to you since I was a child in the house, and I am a great trouble to you yet. It is not my fault. I have been chosen for what I have to do. Stands up. I have to free myself first and those that are near me. The love of God is a very terrible thing! Thomas tries to stop him, but is prevented by Beggars. Martin takes a wisp of straw and lights it. We will destroy all that can perish! It is only the soul that can suffer no injury. The soul of man is of the imperishable substance of the stars! He throws wisp into heap⁠—it blazes up.

Act III

Before dawn. A wild rocky place, Nanny and Biddy Lally squatting by a fire. Rich stuffs, etc., strewn about. Paudeen watching by Martin, who is lying as if dead, a sack over him.

Nanny	To Paudeen. Well, you are great heroes and great warriors and great lads altogether, to have put down the Brownes the way you did, yourselves and the Whiteboys of the quarry. To have ransacked the house and have plundered it! Look at the silks and the satins and the grandeurs I brought away! Look at that now! Holds up a velvet cloak. It’s a good little jacket for myself will come out of it. It’s the singers will be stopping their songs and the jobbers turning from their cattle in the fairs to be taking a view of the laces of it and the buttons! It’s my far-off cousins will be drawing from far and near!
Biddy	There was not so much gold in it all as what they were saying there was. Or maybe that fleet of Whiteboys had the place ransacked before we ourselves came in. Bad cess to them that put it in my mind to go gather up the full of my bag of horseshoes out of the forge. Silver they were saying they were, pure white silver; and what are they in the end but only hardened iron! A bad end to them! Flings away horseshoes. The time I will go robbing big houses again it will not be in the light of the full moon I will go doing it, that does be causing every common thing to shine out as if for a deceit and a mockery. It’s not shining at all they are at this time, but duck yellow and dark.
Nanny	To leave the big house blazing after us, it was that crowned all! Two houses to be burned to ashes in the one night. It is likely the servant-girls were rising from the feathers and the cocks crowing from the rafters for seven miles around, taking the flames to be the whitening of the dawn.
Biddy	It is the lad is stretched beyond you have to be thankful to for that. There was never seen a leader was his equal for spirit and for daring. Making a great scatter of the guards the way he did. Running up roofs and ladders, the fire in his hand, till you’d think he would be apt to strike his head against the stars.
Nanny	I partly guessed death was near him, and the queer shining look he had in his two eyes, and he throwing sparks east and west through the beams. I wonder now was it some inward wound he got, or did some hardy lad of the Brownes give him a tip on the skull unknownst in the fight? It was I myself found him, and the troop of the Whiteboys gone, and he lying by the side of a wall as weak as if he had knocked a mountain. I failed to waken him trying him with the sharpness of my nails, and his head fell back when I moved it, and I knew him to be spent and gone.
Biddy	It’s a pity you not to have left him where he was lying and said no word at all to Paudeen or to that son you have, that kept us back from following on, bringing him here to this shelter on sacks and upon